Everyone at the Same Start Line: A Library Information Literacy Certificate Program to Ensure Graduate-Level Skills

Graduate information literacy skill proficiency has arguably been one of the most difficult concerns to address for academic librarians. This poster presentation addresses our need to identify the unique challenges facing students entering a graduate academic program; how to address those needs in an effective and accessible learning environment; and engaging graduate faculty to integrate the library’s program into their diverse program areas. Areas of information include a synopsis of our literature review, faculty survey results, a draft assessment tool, and an outline of the proposed tiered instruction modules. Our literature review reveals the diversity of obstacles in ensuring graduate students are properly equipped with the information literacy skills needed to succeed. Challenges include varying levels of incoming aptitude; graduate non-homogenous information needs across different student populations and programs; and there is not yet a standard assessment tool designed to evaluate incoming graduate student proficiencies. Other contributing factors are technology deficits, time out of school, and external obligations. Adding to this is the growing popularity of online advanced degree options, which tend to isolate students in small, degree-specific information silos from which they tend not to intuitively reach out to their library or librarians for help. In Spring 2021 we began the development of a graduate information literacy certificate program to be adopted and integrated in all our graduate programs. Our development process is facilitated by a Department of Education Title V grant, devoted to enriching the academic attainment and retention of Latinx post-baccalaureate students (PODER). Among the grant objectives is a charge to integrate information literacy and research education within graduate courses. Initial graduate faculty discussions revealed a preference for an asynchronous library program, as faculty broadly agreed that graduate students were likely both mature and disciplined enough to be successful, self-directed learners. We composed and analyzed a faculty survey collecting more detailed information on preferences in modality, deployment, and outcomes of an information literacy program. From these discussions and faculty survey results, a useful and broadly applicable information literacy program specific to our graduate students has begun to develop. Our first step is a testing framework, assessing the information literacy skill proficiency of each incoming graduate student. The assessment is divided by three tiers of proficiency – foundational, advanced, and professional – with students testing out of those tiers in which they demonstrate comprehension. Students then engage with asynchronous modular library content to learn (or re-learn) the critical information literacy skills needed to succeed at the graduate level. By passing a post-assessment test, graduate students receive a certificate as part of their degree program requirements. This framework is designed to target the information literacy skill deficits seen in our incoming graduate student population, to assess what individual students will need to learn or re-learn at for graduate-level research and information assessment needs, and support their knowledge gaps by building, reinforcing, and applying iterative skill-based lessons through an asynchronous, online-accessible graduate information literacy certificate